Thursday, June 29, 2017

One place in France we really wanted to see was Mont St. Michel, on the northern coast along the English channel. It’s a famous medieval abbey with a surrounding village; when the tides come in, it can look like an island. Given its distance from major cities, it’s probably easiest to visit with a car, which made it an easy addition for us this trip.

We packed up our suitcases in the Loire Valley in the morning, and got ready for the 3.5 hour drive. We had a few stops along the way, and for an early lunch, we stopped at a rest stop or “Aire”, which ended up having some good food. Our hamburgers and sandwiches were nice, and we got more pastries for dessert.

Mont St. Michel

We arrived at Mont St. Michel sometime between 12:30pm and 1pm.  Beautiful!

We stayed quite a while and found it to be interesting both from a distance and close up.

After being cooped up in the car, the boys liked the idea of walking the ramparts first.  They are quite long and go all the way to the top.  On the way, there are tons of hotels, restaurants, and gift shops.

The walls were quite enjoyable, less crowded that the streets, and gave us a nice overview of the area.

Climbing then to the top, we went into the church, which was quite nice and had a lot more rooms than we expected. There was a tour path to follow, and covered quite a bit.

We also went into a few small museums in town; not sure if those were actually worth going to, but the kids liked them.  They were particularly fascinated by the somewhat hokey dungeon.

We walked back down along the streets, getting both views of the water and the vibrancy of the town.

At this point, we thought about walking on the mud flats, but given that the boys were running a bit short on clean clothes, decided to skip it.  You can read about some of our laundry strategies.

On our way back to the parking lot, we had a choice between waiting for the shuttle to the parking lot and walking.  It looked like it would be nice, so we decided to walk.  Of course, it started raining about halfway to the car, but we still had fun. I love this picture:

On to Normandy!

Keep reading our travel blog for more adventures in France!

Here are some more blog posts from this trip to Europe: